Spill It, Lilly
by Joanarc4
Summary: "I've got a secret. A good one." Pre-series AU, beginning on October 3rd, the day of the pep squad car wash. What if Veronica dragged Lilly's secret out of her on that fateful day? Extremely AU. Eventual LoVe.


A/N: Don't own, just for fun.

A/N2: Pre-series AU, beginning on October 3rd, the day of the pep squad car wash, the day Lilly Kane would be murdered if this were canon. What if Veronica dragged Lilly's secret out of her on that fateful day? Eventual LoVe. Cause they're, you know, epic.

A/N3: Warning - the Veronica in this fic is very different from the Veronica on the show. That's because the formative events that influenced V's character in the show haven't happened here. At least not yet. So if you think she's a little OOC, you're absolutely right.

A/N4: For those of you anxiously awaiting updates to _Take __a__ Ride __With__ Me_, I promise you I haven't abandoned it. I've been bogged down in a bunch of other necessary writing, and I've also had serious writer's block with the current chapter of that fic. When this new story popped into my head, I decided to use it to get my head back into the characters and see what wiggled free. It's at the top of my list to get back to TARWM, so with any luck I'll get there very very soon. Encouragement welcome.

Chapter One: Secrets Revealed

"I've got a secret, Veronica Mars. A good one."

I stopped pushing the soapy sponge around the hood of the car I was washing and looked over my shoulder. Lilly Kane was grinning at me, her blue eyes sparkling. I grinned back and raised my eyebrows at her, inviting her to go on. Lilly's secrets were usually good ones. She leaned toward me.

"Girls, less talk. More scrub," Ms. Stafford called out. Lilly and I both glanced at her, and then back at each other. Lilly rolled her eyes.

"Later," she said, tossing her long blond hair and bouncing away.

I watched her go, shaking my head. That was my best friend, dangling something tasty in front of me and then yanking it away before I could get a bite. I'm sure she never intended to tell me right away...she'd have given me a hint and then let me wonder about it for a while before breaking down and telling me.

Well, not this time.

I dropped my sponge in the bucket and darted after her. She didn't see it coming, so when I grabbed her wrist and dragged her towards the far side of the gas station, she squealed. I put my finger to my lips, and with a furtive glance over her shoulder, she tossed her sponge to the side and ran with me.

When we reached the side of the building and were out of view of Ms. Stafford and the rest of the pep squad, I pushed her up against the whitewashed concrete.

"Okay, Lilly, spill it. What's the secret?"

I tried not to hope she was finally going to tell me what was going on with Duncan. Her brother, my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, that is, since a week before he had simply stopped speaking to me, ignoring my phone calls and pretending I flat out didn't exist. Lilly had promised to look into it but then changed her tune from "you guys belong together, he'll come around" to "there are so many better guys out there, to hell with Duncan, it's better this way," and wouldn't tell me anything else.

Lilly wrinkled her nose. "It smells like piss here."

We were standing next to the rest room, and it did reek something terrible. But I needed to know what she was smirking about.

"Tell me."

She shook her head. "Not here. This is too good of a secret to tell you while we're surrounded with eau de men's room. Come on."

This time _she_ grabbed _my_ hand, and pulled me around to the back of the gas station, where an eight-foot-tall chain link fence separated us from the Mega-Mart parking lot. Before I knew what she was up to, she released my hand and scrambled up and over the fence, dropping down to the other side. She whirled back around.

"Come on, Mars. Up and over."

I eyed the fence. I wasn't sure how she had just climbed the thing and _was_ sure that if I tried, I'd just make a fool of myself. Lilly was always a half-step ahead of me while I stood back and waited for more secure footing.

"You're not serious," I said. "Lil, come back over here and just tell me already. We have to get back to the car wash before Ms. Stafford notices we're gone."

She sauntered close to the fence and stuck her fingers through the links, leaning back and looking up.

"It's not that high, and it's easy. Let's go, Veronica." She returned her gaze to me, wiggled her eyebrows. "We're skipping the rest of the afternoon. I've had about all the pep I can take for one day. And you need to practice scaling walls for when you need to make a quit exit from visiting all your illicit lovers."

I snorted. "I'm sorry, I think you've mistaken me for you. I don't have lovers."

"You will. Now, just grab on as high as you can, stick your toe in one of the holes, and pull yourself up. It's cake." When I didn't move, she wiggled her eyebrows. "We'll get ice cream. Amy's mint chocolate chip. Then we'll walk the long way around the block to my car and be fancy free in no time."

I regarded her for a minute, saw the pleading in her eyes. She must really want to tell me this secret. Finally, I grabbed the fence and hoisted myself up. After that first pull, it was surprisingly easy, and before I knew it I was dropping down beside her. It was always like that - she would say _Come__ on,__ Veronica, _and _You__ can__ totally__ pull__ this __off,_ and _But__ you__'__re__ not__ going__ to __make __me__ go__ alone, __are __you _and _Stop__ suppressing__ your __inner__ jailbird_, and then she'd beam at me, and I did whatever she wanted me to do.

Usually, it was fun. Sometimes, it got us in trouble. Luckily, since my dad was the Sheriff of Neptune and _her_ dad was the richest man in town, getting _out_ of trouble was nearly as easy as getting into it. Most of the time. It hadn't worked too well at homecoming a few weeks ago. We had stayed out all night having a limo party with the boys - who were still our boyfriends at the time - and skipped the dance entirely, only to be met by our parents at the Kane house the next morning. My dad was in his uniform and everything. We were all grounded, of course, but somehow within a week she had managed to get us un-grounded, just in time to head down to San Diego for Fleet Week. Lilly is sort of like magic sometimes.

She giggled when I stumbled a little. "Lovely form, would have been a ten if you had stuck the landing. Now, come on! This secret is going to rock your world." She took off across the parking lot and, with a roll of my eyes, I followed. Lilly was always searching for things that would rock our world. She was usually disappointed, but that didn't keep her down for long before she was up and searching for something bigger, better and more scandalous.

Ten minutes later we strolled down Burberry St. licking ice cream cones in silence. Lilly had a double scoop of raspberry sherbet and I was chowing down on the promised mint chocolate chip. I waited until she had finished her first scoop and rescued the drips from around the top of her sugar cone before I elbowed her.

"All right, let's have it."

She turned to me with a small smile. She had a dab of sherbet on her nose, but I didn't tell her to wipe it off. For a minute, it felt almost like we were kids again, twelve instead of sixteen, in soccer uniforms instead of pep squad outfits. Although, come to think of it, we could have been...I wondered for a moment about how similar the short shorts and tiny tees were and what that said about pep squad.

I missed being a kid. Being a teenager was complicated. Boyfriends and break-ups and parties and drama and popularity...it was all a lot to handle sometimes.

My fantasy of returning to simpler times was about to be shattered, however.

"Guess who my new boy toy is."

Lilly skipped a little beside me, taking another lick from her cone. She had broken up with Logan Echolls, her on-again off-again boyfriend of over two years, just a couple of weeks ago. Right before Duncan dumped me, actually. I wondered for a moment if Duncan was being single in solidarity with Logan, who was his best friend. I wondered if Logan knew why Duncan dumped me. Then I shook it off and returned to the present.

"I don't know, Lil. Who?"

She sighed in exasperation. "That's not how this works, Veronica. Come on, play the game."

I rolled my eyes. Whenever Lilly and Logan broke up, which was every couple of months or so, Lilly would run out and get a new guy. Sometimes she'd be very public about it and use it to make Logan jealous, so they could have it out - usually in the middle of the quad at school during lunch - and get back together. Sometimes she'd keep it a secret. Either way, I was usually the first to know who the new guy was, and it was my job to guess.

"Um..." I thought for a second. Lilly didn't usually return to the same guy twice, other than Logan, that is. "Casey?"

Lilly wrinkled her nose and crunched into her sugar cone. "Nope. Guess again."

"Dick Casablancas?"

"Ew, gross. Like I would touch Madison Sinclair's leftovers."

Lilly had a point. She wasn't above stealing a guy away from another girl, sometimes because she wanted the guy and sometimes because she wanted to teach the girl a lesson, but with Dick it would be different. Madison wouldn't take it as an insult, she'd see it as an endorsement of her choice. And since the two of them were currently broken up, it wasn't much of a challenge for Lilly. Lilly loved a challenge.

"Lilly, will you just tell me? You know I'm no good at this."

"Think outside the box, Veronica. This is a _really_ good secret."

She was so infuriating sometimes. I finished the last of my ice cream cone and licked my fingers. Outside the box...so maybe it wasn't one of our crowd. Lilly sometimes dabbled in other areas, but usually only to make a point or piss off Logan...or her mom.

"I don't know...that guy who runs the PCH bike club?"

Lilly coughed on the last bite of her cone, and I slapped her on the back. When she had her breathing under control, she glanced at me.

"Why would you guess _him_?" she asked.

"I was thinking outside the box. And it would certainly piss off Celeste." Celeste was Lilly's overbearing, disapproving mother. Celeste hated me, so I was usually in favor of piss-off-Celeste plans.

Lilly laughed. "That it would. But no, he's not the new boy toy. Okay, I'll give you a hint. What is the one thing that always makes me go back to Logan?"

I frowned. "Because you're madly in love with him and he's madly in love with you?"

Lilly snorted. "He's madly in love with the drama. Maybe with the idea of us. He's not in love with _me_, and I'm not in love with _him_. Come on, Veronica. I've told you. It's because our Logan is amazing in bed."

"Okay, fine," I said. I didn't believe her. Not about him being great in bed...I would have no way of judging that since I myself had never had sex and my experience in the bedroom was pretty PG-13, even though Duncan and I had dated for a year. I didn't believe her about them not being in love with each other. Logan looked at her with complete adoration - when he wasn't looking at her with complete disgust, that is. And Lilly loved him too, that I was sure of. It was only a matter of time before they got back together again, everyone knew that.

"So this time we're done for good. We're not getting back together. For real this time. How could I possibly give up that amazing sex for good, unless..."

"Unless...what? Unless you had someone who was just as good?"

She skipped ahead and turned to face me, walking backwards. "Better. A more...classic model, you might say, with more experience and more refined techniques."

I shrugged. I was getting tired of the game. Lilly could clearly sense that, because she shook her head.

"Fine," she said, stopping so that I was forced to stop as well. "I'll tell you. I'm sleeping with Aaron Echolls."

I let that sink in for a minute, and then I burst out laughing. "Lilly, be serious."

"Oh, I'm very serious."

I examined her face. She was smirking, smug, like she had just figured out the secret to immortality. Behind that, though, there was an uncertainty in her eyes, like she was worried about what my reaction would be. As I realized she really was serious, I let my mouth fall open. This was way more than I had expected. This wasn't a run of the mill secret. Lilly had done a lot of things I didn't approve of, but she had certainly never had an affair with a married man. That I knew of, I mean.

"Wait a second. Seriously, you're sleeping with Logan's _dad_?"

She nodded.

"How long has this been going on? How did it happen?"

"About two weeks," she said. "The day you told me about Logan kissing Yolanda at his party, and I dumped his ass at lunch, I skipped the last couple of periods of the day and went over there. Aaron answered the door and told me Logan wasn't there, and I walked past him into the house and stripped."

"Lilly!"

She rolled her eyes. "He'd been trying to get into my pants for months. Maybe longer. I just decided to let him."

I thought about that. Logan's father, the movie star, often made me uncomfortable. He was always commenting on how pretty Lilly and I were, and he often put his arm around one of our shoulders, stood a little too close. On the rare occasions I found myself alone with him, he had a tendency to talk softly, with his hand on my arm, about if I ever needed anything or wanted to talk I could come to him. It was creepy. Maybe he was trying to get into my pants, too, only I didn't have as much experience as Lilly and so didn't recognize it for what it was.

"Veronica?" Lilly was looking at me with concern. "Hey, are you mad at me?"

"No," I said quickly. "But Lilly, this isn't...this isn't some boy from school. Mr. Echolls is married, and Lynn has always been so nice to us. What if she found out? What if _Logan_ found out? It would crush him."

As those words came out of my mouth, I realized why she had done it. To get back at Logan for kissing Yolanda. It seemed a disproportional response, like launching a nuclear warhead after getting winged by a squirt gun.

Lilly glanced away. "Well, I don't plan on Logan finding out. Ever. So you can't tell him." She looked back at me. "Promise, Veronica."

"You know I would never," I said. And it was true. Lilly was my best friend. My first loyalty was to her. Besides, there was no part of me that wanted to be responsible for hurting Logan with this news. Lilly may have thought he didn't love her, but I knew he did. I could see it in everything he said, every look he gave her, the way he touched her.

We had started walking again. I slung my arm around her waist and leaned my head on her shoulder, and she relaxed.

"I'm so relieved you know," she said. "It was killing me to keep that one inside."

"Yeah, well, no wonder. Lil, what are you going to do now? Are you going to keep seeing him?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "For a while, at least. Don't worry, we're very careful. No one will find out. So, you want to know what the great Aaron Echolls is like between the sheets?"

"Not really," I said, and that was the truth. The guy was our fathers' age. He may be famous, and rich, and handsome, but that didn't change the fact that he must have been thirty years older than we were. Yuck.

We reached Lilly's car, and she unlocked the doors. I opened the passenger seat and was about to climb in when I spotted a folded piece of paper and a shot glass on the seat. I picked them up.

"What's this?" I asked, holding them out to her. She frowned, and took them from me.

"I got baked in Ensenada," she read off the shot glass. She rolled her eyes. "It's from Logan," she guessed, opening the note. She scanned it, frowning deeper, and then she tore the note in half, crumpled up the pieces, and tossed them out the window.

"Lilly?"

She threw the shot glass into the back seat and then started the car. "I guess Logan's back from Tijuana early. That...complicates things."

"What did the note say?" I asked.

"Nothing." She paused, and then smiled sadly at me. "Just what I was telling you earlier. That we're really over for real this time. Hey, I need you to do me a favor."

"What?" My tone was cautious. It was usually best not to make promises to Lilly unless you knew what you were promising.

"Logan was supposed to be down in TJ with Dick and his baby brother all weekend. Lynn is at some spa somewhere, and I was going to spend the rest of the day with Aaron. But if Logan is back early, that could screw this up. If Aaron doesn't know Logan is back, he'll be pissed at _me_ for not showing up. If he does know Logan is back, he'll be pissed at Logan, and...it's better that he not get pissed at Logan. Will you come with me to the Echolls' place and check it out? If his car is there, find Logan, keep him occupied while I deal with Aaron?"

"Oh, Lilly, I don't know..." I really really did not want to get involved in this. Really really did not.

"Please, Veronica. This is the only time I'll ask you to cover for me. Just...find him and text me where he is so I can go to Aaron and we can make alternate arrangements."

I knew she was lying, that this was not the only time she would ask. But what was I going to do? She was Lilly. I could rarely say no to her. Most people had trouble with that.

"Fine," I said. "What about my car?" It was parked up the street, in view of the car wash. I had been on time, Lilly had been late...or maybe she had parked way down the street on purpose.

"I'll bring you back later to pick it up. You're the best." She leaned over and kissed my cheek, then shot out into traffic as I scrambled for my seatbelt. Lilly wasn't the world's most reliable driver.

A short while later, we pulled up to the Echolls estate and Lilly punched in the code for the gate. She drove slowly up the driveway, and sure enough, there was Logan's brand new bright yellow XTerra sitting there.

"Shit," she said. "He's here. Okay, you go up to the door, tell whoever answers that you're looking for Logan, and find him. Then text me where he is and keep him occupied, and I'll go around back to meet Aaron in the poolhouse." She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. "I'm right on time, he should be waiting for me."

"What am I supposed to do with Logan?" I asked. I was feeling very uneasy about this plan.

"Whatever you usually do with him."

That was no help. Logan and I didn't really hang out alone. It wasn't like it was normal for me to show up out of the blue to see what he was up to. I couldn't remember a time when I had ever done that. He was sure to be suspicious.

But I looked at Lilly's pleading eyes and sighed, then opened the door and hopped out of the car.

"Thanks, Veronica," she said.

"Yeah, whatever." I slammed the door and jogged up to the front door, where I rang the bell. I heard it echoing in the cavernous house.

After a minute, a housekeeper opened the door.

"Hi," I said. "I'm here to see Logan."

She stepped back and waved me inside. "He's upstairs, I think," she said. She recognized me, I spent a fair amount of time over there when the four of us - Logan, Lilly, me, and Duncan - were hanging out by the pool.

"Thanks," I said, and made my way through the foyer and up the stairs.

The house was quiet. Logan's house was usually quiet when his parents weren't home. I wondered if Aaron even knew that Logan was here. He could have been out in the poolhouse and completely oblivious to the fact.

I reached Logan's bedroom. The door was closed. I knocked, but there was no answer, so I pushed it open slowly. The room was dark, the blackout shades down over the giant windows, but I could make out Logan's shape on his bed. It looked like he was asleep. I ventured a few steps into the room and saw a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor next to the bed. Logan was snoring.

I pulled out my phone and texted Lilly.

_I found him. He's passed out drunk on his bed._

After a second, I got a response.

_Watch him. Keep him there. You're the best._

Yeah, I know, I thought, and closed the door behind me. I sat on the floor, but after a minute that felt weird so I went over to the bed. Logan was sprawled across it, mostly on one side, face down. What was I supposed to do, stand here and watch him sleep?

That's what I did, for a few minutes, anyway. He was on top of the covers, fully clothed minus his shoes, and I watched as his back rose and fell with deep, even breaths. Logan asleep looked so...innocent. Awake, he was usually smirking or sneering, holding himself with utter confidence, swaggering around like he owned the world, and there was something about his eyes that somehow made him look older than sixteen. But asleep, that was all wiped away.

Suddenly, I was very tired. After getting up at dawn to help set up the car wash and then spending hours in the sun, being in this cool, dark, quiet room made my eyelids droop.

I gave in and carefully climbed onto the other side of the bed. Logan didn't move. I curled up on my side on the very edge, facing him. I'd just lie here for a while, until I got a message from Lilly that the coast was clear. He probably wouldn't wake up.

I didn't intend to go to sleep, but the next thing I knew I was opening my eyes and trying to remember where I was.

I was wrapped up in something warm, heavy, and solid. I burrowed into the warmth, and breathed in, getting a strong scent of the ocean and something else familiar. I froze. Logan.

Sometime during my nap, we had shifted from our own sides of the bed to the middle. My face was buried in his neck, my nose just above his collarbone. He was on his side, facing me, with his arm over me, his elbow at my waist and his hand splayed across my back, tangled in my hair. His right leg was tangled up with my left leg.

Being in this position was oddly comforting and very strange. Strange because I had never been this close to Logan before. When we hung out, we always had the Duncan and Lilly buffer. Sure, every so often he picked me up and slung me into the pool - he liked to tease me about weighing nothing - but I'd never..._snuggled_ with him. Hell, I'd only ever lay in bed with Duncan a few times, and we had never really snuggled like this.

I had no idea why it was comforting.

I tried to figure out how to extricate myself without disturbing him. I needed to check my phone, see if Lilly had taken care of the Aaron situation. I didn't know how much time had passed, so I wanted Logan to stay asleep, if possible, in case I had only been here a few minutes.

I slowly pulled back, but Logan just tightened his hold on me and pulled me closer.

"Hey babe," he murmured. He dipped his face toward mine and brushed our noses together, inhaling deeply.

_Oh god, what do I do?_

When his lips touched mine, I froze. Logan was kissing me. Logan was kissing _me_. My stomach did a little flip, and then another one when he opened his mouth. _I should push him away, I should scramble out of the bed,_ I thought frantically, but a part of me didn't want to. I was...curious. I had never kissed - really kissed, I mean, not just in a game of spin the bottle - any boy but Duncan. Logan felt different. His lips were more assertive, firmer than Duncan's.

His tongue entered my mouth, and then his eyes sprang open. We jumped apart. I scrambled backward off the bed, and Logan fell off the other side, landing on the floor with a thud.

"Ow, shit," he said.

"Are you okay?" I asked, peering over the bed, trying to see him in the darkness. He pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet, scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Veronica? What the hell? Did we..."

"No." I shook my head vigorously. "No, absolutely not."

He looked down, saw that he was fully clothed, as was I, and then squinted at me.

"What are you doing here?"

"I...heard you got back from Tijuana early and I...wanted to see how you were doing." _Smooth, Veronica._ "Um...I saw the J.D. on the floor and decided to wait for you to wake up. I guess I fell asleep too."

While he digested that, I pulled out my phone and glanced at the display. No new messages from Lilly, and about a half hour had passed since we had arrived. Crap, that meant the coast wasn't clear.

Logan was shaking his head, looking confused, and I was thinking quickly. I had to keep him in the room, with the shades down.

While I was trying to figure out my next move, I heard the roar of a car engine starting up and the squeal of tires on pavement. I darted over to the window and peeked through the shade. Lilly's car was barreling down the driveway towards the gate.

_Great, __Lilly_. _Now __what__ am __I__ supposed__ to__ do?_

"What's going on?" asked Logan from behind me.

"Ummm, nothing, I just -"

Then I saw Aaron run from the side yard, across the drive to the garage, and disappear inside. Moments later his sports car pealed out of the garage and down the drive, after Lilly's car.

I had a very bad feeling about this.

What was I supposed to do? My car was still at the car wash. If I called my dad, I'd have to explain...what, exactly? I didn't know where they were going. I didn't even know what I would say was happening. And it would take too long for him to come and pick me up anyhow.

That left Logan. But if I had Logan drive me...say to the Kanes' house, I was risking him finding out about his dad and Lilly. That was no good either. If I had him drop me at my car, it would take too long to get to the Kanes'.

I dropped the shade and turned back around. Logan was frowning at me, and blinking. I was pretty sure he was still waking up.

"Veronica, something weird is... Why are you here again? What's going on outside?"

"I need your car," I said. "Where are the keys?" I glanced around the room, then snapped a shade up to let in the light. There, on the bedside table. I raced over, but before I could grab them, Logan snatched them up and grabbed my arm with his other hand.

"Woah," he said. "What's the matter with _your_ car?"

"It's not here," I said. "It's at the pep squad car wash. I..." I had no way to explain that, but Logan suddenly frowned.

"Did Lilly drop you off? She got my note, I guess," he said, without waiting for a confirmation.

"I just remembered I have to be...somewhere. Right now. I'll bring your car back, I promise. An hour, tops."

I tried to grab the keys, but he held them over my head. "I'm sorry, but no way. You're not driving my car. If you need to go somewhere, I'll take you."

"You're drunk," I said.

"_Was_ drunk," he corrected. "Slept it off."

I closed my eyes for a moment. Precious minutes were slipping away. I wasn't sure why I felt such a sense of urgency, but I did. I usually listened to my gut, and right now it was screaming at me to _hurry__uphurryuphurryup_.

"Fine," I snapped. "Let's go."

I yanked my arm out of his grasp and grabbed his hand, dragging him down the front steps and out the door. Once we were in the car, he looked at me expectantly.

"To the Kanes'," I said.

His brow furrowed. "Why?"

"Logan, just-"

"Okay, okay. Sheesh." He put the car in gear and pulled down the drive.

"Go fast."

He glanced at me in question, and then seemed to accept the command at face value. He must have seen something in my face that let him know I was serious. He floored it.

While he drove, I pulled out my phone. I tried calling Lilly, but it went straight to voicemail. I dialed Duncan's number.

"Pickuppickuppickup," I chanted. Duncan didn't pick up. I didn't leave him a message, but hit redial. Still no Duncan. I didn't know who else to call. I didn't know what I would tell them. I tried Lilly again.

"What are you doing?" asked Logan, shooting glances at me.

"Just watch the road and give me your phone."

He dug into his pocket and tossed it over. I dialed Duncan again, and this time he picked up. I bristled at the fact that he was ignoring my calls so blatantly.

"Hey man," said Duncan. "You still down in TJ or are you back?"

"Duncan, it's me," I said. "Are you home?"

"No," he said. "I'm on my way, though. Just left soccer practice. Why are you...why are you calling from Logan's phone?"

"Just get home as fast as you can," I said. "Are your parents there?"

"No," he said. "At least, I don't think so. My dad left this morning, said he was going to work, and my mom usually has a late lunch and shopping on Saturdays."

It's okay, I thought. It's probably fine. Lilly and Aaron probably went somewhere else to have their fling, and were in a hurry so that Logan didn't see. Then why did Lilly leave first? And why had Aaron looked so angry when he tore around the house and raced after her? The bad feeling in the pit of my stomach grew larger.

"Veronica?" Duncan was saying my name repeatedly. "You still there? What's this about?"

"Duncan, just drive fast."

I hung up. When I looked over at Logan, I saw that his jaw was clenched.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on, or what?" he snapped.

"I don't know," I said. "Logan, really. I don't know. Maybe nothing. Just a...feeling."

We reached the Kanes' house and screeched to a stop at the front door. Lilly's car was there, but I didn't see Aaron's. I jumped out of the car. "Stay here," I told Logan. I needed to keep him away from whatever we were going to find. To my surprise, he just slumped back in his seat. He must really not want to see Lilly.

I jogged to the front door. It was locked. Rather than ringing the bell, I ran for the back of the house.

When I rounded the corner, I saw them. Lilly and Aaron. Lilly was tossing her hair and smiling, arranging magazines and sunscreen next to a lounge chair. Aaron was waving his arms around. He did not look happy.

"I'm not playing, you little bitch..." I heard him say.

"Lilly!" I called out.

They both swung around. Lilly visibly relaxed. Aaron went from royally pissed off to charming in less than a second. I strolled closer.

"Hey, Veronica," Lilly called. "Did the car wash close up early?"

"Hello Veronica," said Aaron. "I came over to see Jake, but it seems he isn't home. I found Lilly back here and we were just chatting."

"Yeah," said Lilly. "He was just leaving a message for dad."

She settled herself onto the lounge chair, picked up the bottle of sunscreen, and began to slather it on her legs.

"Have a seat. Want something to drink?"

I moved around Aaron to the chair beside Lilly. "Logan dropped me off," I said pointedly, so that Aaron would hear it. "He's out front. I should go tell him I'm all set."

Aaron listened intently, and gazed at me. Then he gave us a grin. "You kids have fun. Lilly, remember my message."

"Oh, I won't forget, Mr. Echolls."

He gave us a wave and strolled around to the front of the house, whistling.

Once he was gone, Lilly slumped in her chair, putting her head in her hands. I moved over to sit down beside her, put my arm around her shoulders. She started shaking - not crying, just shaking. I waited until she had calmed down.

"I'm sorry," I said finally. "I saw you race out of the Echolls' and the look on Mr. Echolls' face when he went after you...I just...overreacted. And I had no way of getting here without Logan."

She looked up from her hands. "No," she said. "You didn't overreact. I'm just glad you got here when you did. Something...was happening. He was starting to scare me." She sighed. "Do you think Logan knows?"

"I don't know," I said. "He's confused. If we can come up with a reasonable explanation of why I made us take off from his house and come here like bats out of hell, then maybe he'll buy it." Although, I thought, he was already confused as to why I was even at his house in the first place. This was going to take some tricky explaining.

"Hey, Lil," I said. "What _did_ happen?"

At that moment, Logan and Duncan came through the back door, talking furiously. They stopped when they saw us.

She shook her head. "Not now," she said. "I'll tell you later." She shoved herself off the chair. "Hey boys," she waved and grinned. "Have a seat. I'll get us some drinks."

She strolled past them into the house. They watched her go, and then looked at me.

I put on my best sheepish look. "Sorry about the fuss, guys," I said. "I thought Lilly was mad at me and I needed to make sure she wasn't going to...um...call Carrie Bishop and tell her...something I didn't want anyone to know. Turns out she just got tired of waiting for me at Logan's."

Logan eyed me. The explanation didn't make a whole lot of sense, but as long as he hadn't seen his father here, there was no reason for him to figure out what was really going on. After a minute, he shrugged and crossed to the lounge chair beside mine, on the other side from where Lilly had been sitting. He sank into it, and stared out at the pool.

Duncan shoved his hands in his pockets and went back into the house. I watched him disappear, and sighed.

"What the hell did you do to him, anyway?" asked Logan.

I looked over at him, and saw that he had been watching Duncan as well.

"Nothing," I said. "Or, if I did, I don't know what it is. He hasn't told me."

"Did you kiss another guy?"

"No!" Then I blushed. Logan seemed to realize the same thing I did - yes, I kissed another guy. Him. Instead of blushing, however, he leered at me.

"Our kiss doesn't count," he said. "It was long after he dumped you, I thought you were Lilly, and you were asleep."

I flinched. What an ego boost.

"Hey, speaking of..." he raised an eyebrow. "What _were_ you doing in my bed? I mean, if you came over to check on me? I'm pretty sure I came home, downed some Jack, and passed out. I don't remember you being there when I fell asleep."

"Don't flatter yourself," I said. "I wasn't. I told you, I came to check on you, and I couldn't wake you up, so I was going to wait and give it another try. I guess I was tired."

"Why were you checking on me?"

"Because..." I trailed off. Come on, Veronica, think.

"Lilly got my note," he said.

"Yeah." Right, that worked. "She wanted to make sure you were okay, but didn't think you wanted to see her."

I crossed my fingers in my lap, hoping the note said something that would lead to that assumption.

He sighed. "I don't, not really." He pushed himself to his feet. "Well, thanks for looking out for me, Mars. I'm going to find DK. See ya."

He reached out and ruffled my hair as he went by, and I swatted at his hand. Right before he went into the house, he looked back over his shoulder. I couldn't read the expression on his face, but our eyes locked, and he shrugged and turned away.

A few minutes later, Lilly came out with a couple of glasses of lemonade. She settled herself on the lounge chair and handed one to me.

"If they ask," I said, "you got Logan's note, thought he wouldn't want to see you but were worried, and drove me over to check on him. When I didn't come out right away, you left and I thought you were mad at me about something and were going to tell Carrie Bishop some horrible secret."

"That's a sucky cover," she said.

"I know." I sipped my lemonade and then spit it out. It was full of rum. "Lil," I said, shaking my head, "it's barely four-thirty. We're drinking already? Your parents could be home at any time, and we still have to go get my car."

"Don't hassle me," Lilly said, tossing her hair. "I've had a rough afternoon. If you don't want the drink, put it down, I'll drink them both, and we can make Duncan or Logan take you to get your car."

I sighed and put the drink on the table between us. I wasn't a big drinker. Neither was Duncan. Lilly and Logan were the ones who were always adding alcohol to everything.

"So what happened?" I asked.

Lilly slid her sunglasses on and leaned back in the chair. "Where are the boys?"

"Inside."

"I don't really feel like talking about it yet," she said. "Can we just relax a while?"

I watched her carefully. Did she want me to beg and drag it out of her, or did she really want me to leave it alone? She was frowning, which I decided meant she actually didn't want to talk about it.

I settled back in my chair and closed my eyes, letting the late afternoon sunshine wash over me. I figured prying one big secret out of Lilly a day was all the excitement I could handle.

A few hours later, the sun was setting, and I was still none the wiser as to what had happened between Lilly and Aaron that afternoon. I had asked a few more times, and Lilly finally told me she had to think about a couple of things before she had to listen to my opinions on the matter.

Being friends with Lilly is sometimes very frustrating.

When I saw Jake and Celeste come home, I decided it was time for me to leave. I just wasn't in the mood to deal with Celeste's glares behind my back, or Jake's constant questions about school and my life. Lilly had downed several rum-filled lemonades, so I kissed her on the cheek and told her to call me, then when the coast looked clear, I hurried up to Duncan's room.

The door was open, and Duncan and Logan were deep in the throes of some kind of shoot 'em up video game. I waited for a break in the action and then ventured inside. I hadn't been inside Duncan's room in a week, and I suddenly felt weird about it. I hovered in the door for a moment, and then cleared my throat. They both looked up. Duncan quickly looked back at the screen, but Logan smiled.

"Hey, Ronnie," he said. "What brings you to the inner sanctum?"

"I need a ride to pick up my car," I said. "And Lilly's..."

"Incapacitated?" Logan smirked.

"A little. Can...can one of you take me? Or I could call my dad."

"I'll take you," said Logan. "Just let me..." he shifted his attention back to the screen and furiously hit the the buttons on the controller until Duncan groaned and threw his own controller to the floor.

Logan sprang up. "Good game, DK. See you later."

"Later," said Duncan. He busied himself cleaning up the game and the empty bags of chips littering his floor. He hadn't looked back at me. I backed out of the room, and Logan followed me down the stairs.

Once in his car, Logan grinned over at me. "Another ploy to get me alone?" he teased. "Want a replay of this afternoon?"

I whacked his arm. "Gross," I said. "As if I would voluntarily let you kiss me again."

I heard him chuckle, and then he started the engine and hit the gas, sending the car rocketing down the drive. I made sure my seatbelt was fastened securely. Logan drove like Lilly.

We were quiet for a minute. I was once again feeling how odd it was to be alone with Logan. I realized that I didn't really know what he was like when he wasn't around Duncan, or Lilly, or putting on a show for our friends at school.

He reached over and snapped the radio on, then turned down the volume.

"Just in case you're curious," he said, "I'm still a little pissed at you."

I frowned. "For..." I thought for a second, and then it came to me. "For telling Lilly about Yolanda." He _had_ been pissed. For the few days after Lilly had screamed at him in the quad at lunch, he gave me as much of a cold shoulder as Duncan was now doing. Moreso, because he didn't just ignore me, he glared daggers at me and made nasty remarks loud enough for me to hear when he sat behind me in math class.

We hadn't really had a conversation since then, I remembered. I had spent the last week distracted by Duncan was ignoring me, which was much worse, and had sort of forgotten that Logan had actually been mad first.

"How much is 'a little pissed'?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Apparently not enough to refuse to drive you to pick up your car. Or to continue to refuse to talk to you."

"I kind of forgot you were mad," I confessed. "With the whole Duncan thing, I guess I was focused on that and..."

He was shaking his head, but he was smiling. "I see how much my feelings really mean to you," he said. He paused, and then said, "why did you rat me out? It was, like, a two-second drunk mistake. I swear."

"Lilly's my best friend," I said. "What if _I_ was the one kissing another _guy_ at a party, and you saw it? Wouldn't you run and tell Duncan? I mean, while we were still dating."

"Maybe," he said. "Or maybe I would have gone to you first and given you the chance to explain yourself and come clean on your own before going behind your back."

He had a point. Maybe I _should_ have talked to him first.

"Do you blame me for this last break-up?"

He sighed, and then shook his head. "Not really. She was being a bitch to me, ditching my party, and I kissed another girl a little bit in revenge, a little bit to prove I could. We've been treating each other like that for years. Maybe it was about time we stopped."

It was true. Logan and Lilly could be wonderful together, but they spent an awful lot of time hurting each other too. Neither of them liked to be controlled, and both of them liked to feel like the one _in_ control, so they were constantly testing each other, pushing and pulling and digging and stabbing. It was a wonder their relationship worked at all. Maybe Lilly was right. Maybe it _was_ the sex that kept them together. That, and their complementary social standing. Duncan may have been the Prince of Neptune High, but Lilly, the Queen, couldn't date her own brother, so she chose Logan, who turned out to be better suited to be the King anyway.

Did that make me the Princess in our little foursome? I'm not sure I liked that revelation much at all. Of course, now that I wasn't dating the Prince, I was kind of like Lilly's lady-in-waiting, and that was worse.

Who was I, really, besides Lilly's best friend and Duncan's ex-girlfriend? I spent all my time with them, and my life revolved around what they were doing. Today, I had spent most of my day getting Lilly to divulge her secrets and covering for her while she conducted her affair. Because of Lilly and Duncan, I was popular and had a full social life. But our other friends, were they really _my _friends? Once Lilly graduated in a year and a half, and now that I wasn't with Duncan, would I just disappear into the woodwork, forgotten? Was my entire life just hanging onto the Kanes' coattails? Who was Veronica Mars, really?

"Hey, have you gone deaf?" Logan waved a hand in front of my face and looked at me curiously.

I blinked, and realized we had reached my car. I shook my head to clear it, and then smiled sheepishly at Logan.

"Sorry," I said. "Just...thinking."

"Yeah, that looked like a lot of work. No wonder I try to do as little of that as possible."

I giggled, then unbuckled my seatbelt, opened the door, and slid out. "Well, Echolls," I said, "thanks for the ride."

"No problem, Mars" he said. "Thanks for checking up on me. I had no idea you cared." He smirked at me, and I knew he was teasing.

"Well, goodnight," I said. "Oh, and Logan...I'm sorry I ratted you out without talking to you first."

His eyes widened, and then a small smile formed on his lips.

"Yeah," he said. "Well, thanks. I guess I'm not pissed at you anymore."

"I can die happy," I said, and closed the door on his bark of laughter.


End file.
